


brave new world

by sionnain



Category: Alien series (Movies), Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:24:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sionnain/pseuds/sionnain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being stranded on Earth with Vriess might've been Johner's idea of a nightmare, but that was before the aliens decimated his crew. Now, he's just glad he's not left alone on a planet that's seen better days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brave new world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sabin](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sabin).



> Sabin, thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to write in this fandom! I enjoyed writing this, and I hope you find it to your liking. Happy Yuletide, and happy holidays to you! Thanks so much to J, S and E for a thorough and excellent beta.

**brave new world**

*

_Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!_\--The Savage

*

_Earth, man. What a shithole_. --Johner

 

* * * 

When they land, there's a moment where Johner feels like his eyes are burning right out of his skull.

The light is too bright, the sun too much after the subdued grim light of the ship and the cold dead darkness of space. He stumbles for a moment, feet clumsy on the soft sand, unused to feeling anything but metal beneath his boots.

How long has it been since he left footprints on _terra firma_, anyway? Six or seven years, maybe, since that brief stop on that forgotten planet, the one where he'd joined up with the crew of the _Betty_. Since then it's been nothing but metal, hurtling through the vacuum of space in a glorified tin can, running illegal cargo and making money doing other people's dirty work. Not a bad life, not at all, and he'd had no intention of leaving any time soon.

Of course, that was before everything went to shit, before the goddamned aliens.

Part of him wonders if he's dead. But Johner's never believed there's anything after death but a long, silent sleep, so it's news to him if that's actually not the case. If all those religious nutjobs are right and there _is_ an afterlife, then that whole burning thing--yeah, that sounds about right, exactly where he'd expect to end up.

* * * 

Johner met Elgyn in a shithole bar on some piss-poor mining colony where everything tasted like dust.

The planet had three insomniac suns perpetually poised on the horizon; never rising, never setting, just _hanging_. Miserable fucking place, Johner never could get a decent fucking night's sleep; that orange glow made him think the world was on fire every time he looked out the damn window.

He was having a few drinks in one of those nameless dives where they pumped in oxygen but it never seemed like enough, so you felt like you were choking even _before_ you tried their shitty-ass swill. Elgyn, in his black duster like some kind of misfit cowboy, sidled right up to Johner and started talking. The first thing you noticed about Elgyn was his voice; it sounded like broken glass doused in motor oil, set on fire so it burned real slow.

"I hear you're looking for work," Elgyn said, that little half smile on his face that made him look like he knew something you didn't.

Johner took his drink in one swallow, so he could get get drunk as quick as possible without tasting much of anything. He slammed the cup back on the ratty table. "Maybe."

"Maybe I've got something, if you're interested," Elgyn said, and stood up. "Let me know. We leave tomorrow. I've got a crew, and we lost our last...let's just say we got an opening, if you want."

"What's in it for me?" Johner asked, bored, sprawling lazy and insolent in the six sticks of wood passing for a chair. He didn't have any better offers--fuck, all he had was a lot of debt and a few bounty hunters after his ass. But he didn't want to seem too eager, even though he wasn't sure _why_. It was this or staying on this fucking planet of eternal twilight.

Elgyn stood at the entrance to the bar, the door half-opened already. He was silhouetted by the incessant amber glow outside, a halo of burnt copper flame. "Money, what else? Guns. Drugs. What do you want?"

"That's it, pretty much. Women?" Johner asked, grinning mean and sharp.

Elgyn just smiled. "Maybe. But not mine. Tomorrow, like I said. Up to you. We're leaving with or without you, Johner."

Johner didn't know how the son-of-a-bitch knew his name. It didn't matter, though. If he were a poetic man, he'd say he hightailed it the fuck out of town before the triple suns set. Except he wasn't poetic, he was a mercenary, and besides--the goddamned suns never set anyway.

 

* * * 

Only four of them are left alive. Him, Ripley (he's not sure if she's actually human or what), Call (the android formerly known as a hot chick), and Vriess, the only other crew member from the _Betty_.

_Great, we'll be dead by fucking nightfall._ Why couldn't someone else have survived? _Anyone_ else? Someone who isn't going to turn into an alien, or rust because of all the moisture in the air? Fuck, someone who can at the very least _walk_? But everyone else is dead. They're nothing more than ashes in the atmosphere, a flicker in the bright sun that's burning his goddamned eyes.

For a long time Johner stands with his hands on his knees and head bowed, trying to get his bearings. His body is severely weakened from the strain of recent trauma, and it bothers him that he can't recall how much time passed between docking with the _Auriga_ and their violent descent to Earth. Some part of his brain tells him it wasn't long; sixteen, maybe seventeen hours at the most. When he tries to reckon out the time or put some sort of sequence of events together, all he can remember is the sour taste of bile in his throat and the sound of blood pounding in his ears, the _clang_ of his boots striking the metal grating as he ran.

Maybe it's best not to remember anything. It's all a tangle of sheer terror and adrenaline, and he wants to fuck something and drink something and sleep for a fucking _week_. Right now he can barely _see_, though, because the light's so bright and the sky too blue, stretching endlessly above him, too much _wide open_. For half a second, he misses space and the ship and the shadows in which it was so easy to hide.

_Things in the shadows with teeth and there's screaming and blood, blood everywhere, spilling in the water and what the fuck is that thing chasing them, why does it sound like that, claws on metal and that noise it makes and he's never going to forget that sound ever ever ever--_

It's Vriess who breaks the silence, sprawled on the ground and staring up at the sun with his mouth open and his eyes squeezed shut, beaming like some kind of half-wit moron. "Be funny if we got eaten by a tiger or something," he says, laughing hysterically, and Johner thinks madness is probably going to finish what the monsters started and they are all fucking _doomed_, but he laughs because, okay, yeah, that _would_ be pretty fucking funny.

* * *

His first job with his new crew wasn't very glamorous. It didn't involve high-priced hookers or good drugs or even cool, bad-ass guns. It wasn't even anything dangerous, like ferrying criminals to one of the prison planets or kidnapping minor diplomats for ransom.

It was kittens.

Pets, the furry-creature kind, they were a rarity. Only the very rich had pets, no one else could afford them. But it was a very big universe, and there were a lot of very rich people, and not _nearly_ enough pets to go around. When something was in high demand and there was a limited quality...well, that was pretty easy math, right there. It added up to _black market kitty cats_, and Johner's first job.

It went all right, smooth, no real hitches in the plan. Really, how could it go that badly? They were _kittens_. Sure, he felt like a moron standing next to a crate of purring cats while armed to the goddamned _teeth_, but what else was there to do? They were a commodity. They were going to make them all a lot of money. That was definitely worth it.

The cats hated him, though. _Hated_ him. They had to be let out every so often, so they could stretch and walk around and...do whatever the fuck cats _did_. And every time it was his turn to watch them (which was a lot, because he was the new guy and that's how it worked), the fuzzy bastards would take one look at him and hiss, arch their back, bare their little teeth like he was the cat-bogeyman come to take their little feline souls to hell.

They loved Vriess beyond all sense, though. Sometimes Johner would find Vriess with one on his lap, a little spotted one, the smallest of the entire shipment. The runt. Vriess loved that fucking thing. Called it Wrench, or maybe Rotor, something like that. Johner heard him ask Elgyn if he could keep it while they were docking with the buyers' ship.

"Come on," Vriess whined, the cat half-asleep on his lap, Vriess' fingers rubbing behind its little neck. "It's just a runt, no one will notice."

"That runt's worth more than you," Elgyn told him, grabbing the cat by the scruff and hauling it off Vriess' lap. He looked hilarious in that black duster, a menacing figure who stole kittens from his mechanic to sell to rich brats with too much money.

Vriess watched him go without saying a word, but his face--he looked like he'd lost everything he'd ever wanted in the world.

Johner didn't stop teasing him about it for weeks. Sometimes he'd come up behind Vriess while he was working, fixing the thousands of things that were always breaking on the _Betty_. Johner would say, _meow, meow, meow_, in a low, mocking voice. He'd just laugh when Vriess threw a wrench at him and told him to shut up.

A few days later, Johner's bunk collapsed while he was passed out dead-drunk, and he twisted his ankle bad enough to miss out on the next job--which did, motherfucker, involve hookers and some drugs. It turned out that a bolt had come loose on the frame, apparently some really fucking _serious_ bolt that held everything together. Johner didn't think anything about it, reckoned it for his own stupid dumb luck, until he somehow remembered--

Bolt. That was Vriess' cat's name. _Bolt._

Son of a bitch.

* * *

Ripley, their resident half-human, half-alien hybrid, stands around staring up at the sky and muttering under her breath. He almost asks her what she's on about, then figures he probably doesn't want to know. She's a fucking weirdo, that one, and Johner shudders a little when he remembers making a pass at her earlier. Well, fuck it, he didn't _know_ she was some kind of freaky-ass face-sucker hybrid or whatever the fuck, did he? No, no he did not. Just like he had no goddamned idea that Call was a robot, either.

It's not like there were a whole lot of _options_ up there on a mercenary ship, and a guy had to take what he could get. There are probably less options _now_, but he's got other problems to worry about, first.

"We're going to need to find shelter, food," Ripley says, squinting, looking around with her hands on her hips. "I don't know if there are other people here--"

Johner barks out a laugh. "Fuck the _people_, lady, are those goddamned aliens here?"

Ripley meets his eyes and smiles. Despite the heat of the day and the sun beating down on his head, Johner feels a chill rush through him. Jesus, that bitch is creepy. "Just me," she says softly, looking up towards the sky, like she's trying to see past the blue to what lay beyond. "Just me."

"Yeah, okay." Johner takes a step away from her, and notices that Call is staring at Ripley with a look uncomfortably close to adoration. _So that's how it is, then? Guess I'll have to see if I can find some good-looking natives, or it's me and Rosy Palm for the foreseeable future until we get off this rock._ It's not out of the realm of possibility to think there are chicks here, though. Earth isn't a popular planet to live on. There are a few sects of crazy-ass survivalists who abandoned modern technology about six zillion years ago, and some fanatical religious types who stayed behind waiting for their god when all the smart people left for the colonies. Loonies, mostly.

Then again, no one here just spent the better part of a day menaced by aliens, so what the fuck does he know. Maybe they had the right idea, staying put on humanity's homeworld. Johner's not too up on his pre-colonial Earth history, but he's pretty sure he never had to read about _devouring hordes of aliens_ in school. Might have liked it better, if he had.

Johner walks over to where Vriess is sitting, grabbing handfuls of sand and letting it drift slowly through his fingers with an expression of delight. "I don't have my chair," he says, voice maniacally cheerful, and his smile is too wide. There's something far too bright swimming in the gleam of his eyes. "Guess I can't move on my own."

"Hope you like building sandcastles, then," Johner says gruffly, and his smirk isn't so much mean as it is tired, as if he's giving Vriess shit because it's expected and familiar when nothing else here is. Johner reaches down and pulls him up easy as anything, yanking him by the scruff just like Elgyn did with that kitten Vriess loved so much. Vriess weighs next to nothing, less than Johner's gun probably, and his weight is barely any hardship at all.

"Where are we going?" Vriess asks, arms around Johner's neck. Johner can feel Vriess's breath, too fast, the quick breathing of someone two seconds away from a full-blown panic attack. Great. Just what he needs to make his day better.

"Somewhere else," Johner answers pointedly, and starts walking inland and away from the ocean. It reminds him too much of the water flooding the galley. He keeps thinking he hears screaming beneath the roar of the waves, sees slick, inhuman flesh and silver sharp teeth in the white of the surf.

No one asks him where he's going, or why he's carrying Vriess. Johner doesn't volunteer this information, because he doesn't know either. He only grabbed Vriess because Vriess can build shit and he's smart and, okay, Johner doesn't want to be left alone with the Alien Queen and her robot girlfriend. Surely no one would blame him for that.

* * *

It wasn't that he didn't like Vriess. Johner didn't really like anyone, but he didn't _dislike_ them, either. He was immune to people, for the most part, because they were pretty much the same anywhere you went. Like guns, if you thought about it. Different models, different parts, but they all worked basically the same way and did basically the same thing. Some of them were decent, some of them weren't.

Most everybody had their own self-interest at heart, though, no matter what they told other people. They'd shoot to kill if they had to. Evolutionary instinct. It was called _survival_, it wasn't personal.

Vriess, though...he was just so _easy_ to piss off. It was like the guy didn't have the sense not to react when Johner pushed at him, obviously looking for the sore spots, the things that itched and burned. Johner did that to everybody. Christie hit him in the mouth, Sabra kicked him in the balls, Elgyn threatened to put him out the airlock. It was how you established--fuck, what was it, pack hierarchy. That's all he was doing. Establishing rank, finding his place. It settled down with everyone else after awhile, and they still bared teeth and rubbed raw against each other every now and then. But most of the time, he got along all right with everyone.

Him and Vriess, they never did stop the bickering. Most of the time it wasn't mean, but sometimes it was. Johner was pretty sure that he could take every motherfucker on the ship if he had to, no matter how quick they were on the draw. Physically, Vriess was no match for Johner--few guys were, he was big and brawny and knew how to fight. He fought _dirty_, too, and that was a really useful skill. Not a lot of people would do that, kick a man when they were down. If it would get Johner out alive, fuck yeah, he would. Survival instinct. Nothing personal.

Vriess, though--Vriess was smart. He couldn't walk, but he could fix anything. Elgyn said all the time they'd be "dead in the water" if it weren't for Vriess, that he knew the ship like a guy knew his dick and without him they'd be sunk. And Johner would think about that sometimes, entombed in the ship as it drifted _forever_, and fuck if that didn't give him nightmares.

So maybe he hated that if it came to that, Johner couldn't out-smart or out-mechanic Vriess. That all the fighting skills in the fucking world wouldn't be enough to save his ass and _win_. He'd just run out of air and end up bloated and dead, floating in his silent metal coffin until the universe folded in on itself or whatever it was going to do.

Most of the time, though, Johner just teased Vriess because he was an ass. He'd wonder down to the engine room where Vriess was working, eyes magnified by that stupid pair of glasses he wore and muttering crazily to himself while peering into a mess of wires. Johner made fun of Vriess for being a cripple who couldn't walk, and Vriess made fun of Johner for hitting his head on the ceiling every time he walked into the bridge, so who the hell was he to talk?

But sometimes, Vriess would fix Johner's guns, bitching the whole time about the condition of the weapon and how Johner must have meat cleavers for hands and he should learn to take nicer care of his things. Johner would roll his eyes and say _thanks for the lecture, mom,_ in the bitchiest voice he could, but then he'd pour them both a drink and Vriess would rub oil on the gun until the metal shone.

* * *

Johner has nightmares that first night, because it's too _goddamned dark_.

It's never this dark on the ship, _any_ ship, because pitch-black means you've lost electrical power and oh, ho, grab your ankles and kiss your ass goodbye--that kind of wrong. There's always track lighting in the hallways that shows through the space between the door and the floor; you don't want an airtight bunk in a spaceship, because you have to breathe.

On the colonies, cities are built up too much because humans are pretty good at breeding and there's really not that many habitable planets; even with terraforming and oxygen domes or whatever they do to make it livable. So many people and buildings mean the cities are never dark--somewhere, someone's got a light on. _Space_ is dark, sure, but if you're out there you're not going to be doing much but dying.

So his first night on Earth, when the sun sets and darkness comes down fast and sure, Johner can't see his hand in front of his face and freaks the hell out. Quietly, because he doesn't want Vriess to know if Vriess is also awake. Johner lies there beneath their hastily constructed shelter--palm fronds, or some shit--and berates himself for this stupid fear because _the same shit's out there now that was there in the middle of the goddamned day_, but he can't help it, he's _afraid_. He tries to count sheep but they eventually turn into aliens, so that's out.

Eventually he falls into an uneasy sleep, uncomfortable and unused to sounds in the night that aren't caused by metal gears grinding. The dreams comes at him in a sudden rush; the aliens with their glassy black eyes and their fluid-metal skin, wanting nothing more than to _kill devour survive breed_. In the dream he's running and he's stuck in the sand, which doesn't make sense because there's no sand on a goddamned spaceship but whatever, it's his dream and that's what's happening. Johner's running and he's got a gun that's broken and useless, and the alien is right _there_, breath hot like exhaust on his neck, and now there's water and he's trapped, there's nowhere he can go and nothing to do but die.

He wakes up trying to scream, but it just sounds like a whimper. His adrenaline spikes so suddenly that he can taste his own heartbeat in his mouth. "Fuck," he mutters, bolting upright, looking wildly around in the darkness as if he expects to see it right _there_, standing triumphant over its prey. They don't care that he's a person. They don't care about anything.

"Bad dream, Johner?"

Wait, the _fuck_? Now the alien can _talk_ and it sounds just like--

Johner scowls, expelling a hard breath and lying back down on the soft leaves and damp grass. "Shut the fuck up, Vriess."

"It's okay. I had one, too."

"Yeah?" Johner asks, folding his arms behind his head, trying to pretend his hands aren't shaking.

"Yup. Dreamed we were attacked by aliens, and then we crash landed on Earth and I was stuck there with you."

Johner swallows a laugh and says, "That's a fucking nightmare," and then goes silent, listening to the noises in the dark and thinking what they might be while he tells himself firmly what they _aren't_. In the end he falls asleep listening to the sound of Vriess' breathing, steady and even, because it's the only thing he can hear that's human.

* * *

They had a bad run-in with a bounty hunter that started with a gunfight and ended with Elgyn pushing the ship faster and harder than they probably should've. The inevitable happened and the main power went out, and they were left with nothing but reserves--air, light, communications, the works--until Vriess could get the _Betty_ operational and running under full power.

Everyone had to be as still as possible, not talk, try to conserve energy and air. Johner _hated_ it, it was his worst nightmare come true. They were going to drift forever and suffocate, snuffed like candles, no going out in a blaze of glory like he'd always wanted. Fuck it, he would've rather taken a bullet to the head in the gunfight than end up like this.

Vriess was the only one of them who moved around at all. Johner could hear the mechanical sounds of Vriess' chair moving along the walkways, back and forth, could hear him muttering and the occasional clank of tools as he worked.

Most everyone slept, because there was nothing else to _do_. Sometimes he could hear Sabra and Elgyn doing the exact opposite of _conserving energy_, but hey, sex was as much a survival instinct as anything else, wasn't it? Johner couldn't blame them. And hell, Sabra was hot. Johner _definitely_ couldn't blame Elgyn.

They had some pills, because no doctor on board plus dangerous job equalled creativity when it came to medicine. Taking one or two made you feel good, woozy enough not to notice someone stitching up a wound. Three and you'd be pretty okay with having a bullet taken out of your shoulder, four and you'd take a nap for about forty-six hours. More than that and you'd take a nap forever, though, so you had to be careful. Christie opted for that route, said he'd rather wake up and have everything back to normal or die in his sleep.

Johner stayed awake, because no way was he going to go to sleep and not know for sure if he was going to wake up or not. He tried entertaining himself in his bunk, but there was only so many times you could _fail to conserve energy_ with yourself in a day. So he went and found Vriess, panicked and exhausted, muttering _can't do it, can't do it,_ over and over again to himself and staring at the--whatever he was staring at, some mess of wires and conduits--as if he'd never seen it before.

"Come on, moron, I thought you were _smart_," Johner drawled at him cheerfully, and kept up a steady stream of insults for four hours.

Four hours and twenty-six minutes later, Vriess had the power back on and the _Betty_ was fully operational.

Four hours and twenty-eight minutes later, he hit Johner on the back of the head with a socket wrench and then went to his bunk and slept for sixteen hours straight.

* * *

Three days after they land on Earth, the quiet of their seaside resort is broken when their party of four is found by the Radiation Babies.

That's what Vriess calls them, anyway; distant children of Earth's last nuclear war, when some country of people who hated some other country of people sent a nuclear missile to hate them into oblivion. It was right before that when most people got the fuck off the planet and went to one of the colonies. While there were programs galore and assistance available, you still had to have some means to afford it, and not everybody could. Pre-Colonial Earth was overcrowded to the point of absurdity, so that still left a lot of people waving a sad goodbye to the spaceships from their mudhuts or whatever the hell they lived in back then.

Then there were the god-fearing folk, those who prayed and fasted and believed the spaceships were taking the "godless" away so that the righteous could inherit the resource-defunct and foul-aired Earth at last. So the poor and the crazy, that's who were left breathing poisoned air or digging tunnels underground like moles, hoping nuclear winter would give way eventually to non-nuclear spring.

No one around now remembers that, of course; they have stories and songs (really _bad_ songs) about it, but it's not like there's a tribal elder who was there for the great _watch everyone leave us poor fucks behind_ migration. Johner only knows about it because Vriess tells him the stories, since Vriess remembers the books and used to read them for fun. ("Yeah, I guess you weren't out getting laid, were you?" "This was _before_ I couldn't walk, Johner." "Yeah, I know. Still.")

While Earth eventually recovered from all the nukes and overpopulation and stripping of resources, it never became more than a down-market suburb of civilization, sparsely populated and valued more for its history than its usefulness.

The Radiation Babies believe Johner and Company's story about spaceship troubles and monsters, though it's heavier on the spaceship troubles and lighter on the monsters because that's not going to win them friends, the whole thing about the man-eating hell-beasts. The four of them don't really have anything to offer, save some burned out metal (plenty of that around thanks to the previous civilizations) and their own skill-sets. Vriess can fix things, so he gets accepted quicker than the others, and his physical deformity isn't as unusual here because there aren't that many people on Earth anymore without one. The genetic traces of nuclear holocaust stick around for awhile, apparently.

"It's like I landed on your homeworld," Johner tells Vriess with a grin, and Vriess snorts and hits him with a stick and there's not even any anger between them anymore. No matter what insensitive thing Johner says, Vriess gives it right back and they go about their day. Business as usual for Johner and Vriess, really, it's just that the edges are a little smoother, a little less jagged.

You go through man-eating alien survival camp with a guy, that does something. Forms a bond. And sure, Johner might wish to heaven every day it was Sabra instead of Vriess because she was so goddamned _hot_, but hey. He's only human, right?

Johner pounds wooden stakes into the ground, helps build things in order to prove he's worthy of some fish and a dry place to sleep (post-apocalyptic Earth is also really _rainy_). He's a big guy, muscled, and they don't build them like that here anymore. He's a caustic bastard and he's not very nice, and he's pretty sure the radiation made some of these people dumb in the head for _forever_ and he's not afraid of letting them know he thinks that, but things could be worse. He could be dead.

He still hasn't gotten used to nightfall, to the way the light dies so slowly and yet darkness, when it comes, comes fast.

* * *

He had a bad feeling about the job with the human cargo.

Elgyn did too, Johner could tell. It wasn't their usual business--oh sure, holding diplomats for ransom, that wasn't a problem. Those people were politicians and who cared what happened to them? Prostitutes, drugs, guns--all that stuff was fuel for the fire of the underbelly in which they functioned. It was their purpose, their world, and they were keeping it in business. Supply and demand, you couldn't have one without the other.

But this...

Vriess watched as Johner helped carry the poor bastards into the ship for transport to a science vessel called the _Auriga_. People who were in stasis on a colonial ship, headed to some exciting new world, and were now in crates headed for god knew what. Johner didn't know because he wasn't privy to those kinds of details. He doubted Elgyn was, either.

"Nothing good happens to people on science ships," Vriess said darkly, watching from the doorway as Johner helped prop one of the crates up in the cargo hold.

"Apparently nothing good happens on ships going to colonies, either," Johner pointed out, breathing hard and leaning against the wall. Fuck, these things were _heavy_. Despite the fact he was covered in sweat, he felt a strange chill go down his spine, like whatever was in the cargo box was staring at him. Watching.

Which was dumb. You slept when you were in stasis. No one was awake in there. They thought they were going to a colony and they weren't, and whatever would happen when they got to the _Auriga_....there was nothing Johner or anyone else could do about it.

"It's just a job," he said to Vriess, shrugging, perversely unable to voice his own misgivings. "It's what we get paid for." He pushed away from the crate and expelled a breath, going back to help with the next one. "It's not any better or worse than jobs we've had before."

"The kittens were a lot better," Vriess said dryly.

Johner grinned at him, all teeth. "Well, yeah, if you're a pussy."

"I'm serious, Johner. This--these are _people_ in these crates."

"Yeah. The hookers were people, too. Hey, remember how we had all those babies? Those were people. Small people, sure, but...pretty sure they counted."

"But people were buying the babies to _raise them_." Vriess bit his lip. "You don't know what these people are going or what's going to happen to them--I mean, it could be bad. Really bad."

Johner set his shoulders, scowling. He didn't know why, but Vriess was pissing him off. And why did it still feel like someone was _staring_ at him? This was crazy. "You don't know, Vriess, someone could've wanted those babies to serve up with a side salad. People are weird. Look, of course this is bad business. That's why we get paid to do it. If you're moving legit cargo, you don't call up guys like us. You know that. Now, you gonna get out of my way? Some of us are actually working around here."

Vriess moved, the chair sliding over and out of the doorway with its customary clicks and hums. "I'm just--I wish Elgyn didn't take this job," he muttered, shaking his head. "People in crates. It's creepy. It's like...I don't know. What would a bunch of scientists want with human beings?"

Johner gave an exasperated sigh and threw his hands up in the air. "Hell if I know, Vriess, what part of _I don't ask_ do you not get? Look, maybe they're going to be cooks. Maybe they needed someone to, fuck, wash out the beakers. Or to put weird tubes in their brains and turn them into sex slaves, I don't _know_ and I don't care." He rapped his knuckles on the crate, ignored the rush of unease that went through him. He decided to blame it on Vriess being a fucking nosy idiot who didn't know when to shut up and not ask questions.

"Maybe they're food, too." Vriess made a face. He still looked worried, and uncomfortable, and exactly how Johner felt but wouldn't admit if it meant agreeing with him.

Johner hit Vriess on the head on the way out of the room. "Maybe they are. I'll call them _lunch boxes_ from now on. How's that?"

He was halfway down the corridor before he heard Vriess say, "Maybe they found something in space that eats people, and they want to feed it."

Johner paused in the hallway for a brief second, then looked over his shoulder. "So? So what? Maybe they did. How the hell does that involve us? It doesn't, that's how. If there's a space monster and they're going to use these people as snack food...just be fucking glad you weren't on _that_ ship, and that it isn't us, and stop thinking about it. You know how this goes. We don't know if those babies got good homes or a garnish, and we don't know who's got the hookers on their backs or, hey, who's petting that cute little kitty-cat you cried over. Same thing here. We're never going to know. And that? Is exactly how I like it."

With that, Johner left Vriess in the cargo hold and went to help load the rest of the crates. This was his job, it was just work, and if the people--the _cargo_\--were headed towards a gruesome and terrible death...

What the hell could he do about it?

* * *

Johner dreams about the flooded galley on the _Auriga_ and he swears he can feel the manacle of the alien's claws on his ankle; this time it's him, not Christie, who's hanging off the ladder with the water swirling pale and cold beneath him. In his dream he loses his grip and drops into it, drenching water holding him tight like a lover, drawing him down deeper until he can't see anything but blue.

He swims, looking frantically for the ladder, flailing out and reaching for something with which to haul himself up towards the surface. Even in dreams he's not going to give up without a fight. He's a mercenary because he can out-survive and out-mean other people; and that fucking includes space aliens, too. But as his lungs tighten with the need to breathe, he can _feel_ the creature behind him, gaining on him with every second. Johner races towards the surface, and he can see the ladder, all he has to is reach out and _yes_, grab it, the metal is right there and--

Despite the burn in his lungs and the sweet air just above, Johner looks over his shoulder. And of course it's there, so close, mouth opening and the other, tinier head emerging from the fetid depths of its throat and that is _so fucked up_, that _that_ is going to be the last thing he ever sees--

When he wakes up, he can't breathe. It feels like he's drowning, choking, and he can't stay in his little hut anymore, he has to get _away_. So he goes on a walk down towards the ocean and stops just on the edge of the where the grass turns to sand, tilting his head to look at the sky. It's the same one he sees when it's daytime, he knows that, but it's _looming_ up there; dark and full of aliens, maybe.

The stars are still there, just as distant and cold as they ever were. Johner scans the sky and tries to remember where the planet was where he was born, where he grew up and had another name besides just _Johner_, a name he doesn't use and no one even knows. It's impossible--he's never been good with this stuff, star-scrying or whatever it's called. He never learned constellations or any of that, because why should he? Ships have nav systems for a reason, and what the hell good would it do? You can't see constellations in space, so why learn the names? The don't make sense to anyone anymore, anyway; not him, not Vriess, not the Radiation Babies. No one except maybe Ripley--Ripley, who knows things the oldest of the Radiation Babies don't, Ripley, who spends most of her time by herself staring off into the jungle.

Johner's pretty sure they are going to wake up one day and find out Ripley is gone, living with the weird-ass animals they all hear moving around the dense thicket of trees at night. She'll be one more story to tell around the fire, one more horrible song Johner will pretend to listen to because that's what you have to do to share the liquor with these people.

Call...well. No idea. She seems okay. Johner doesn't think she'll run off with Ripley, but, hell. That'd make a hell of a song, wouldn't it? She's not going to get any older, since she's an android. It freaks him out to think about her, looking the same while all of them are bones and dust. So he doesn't think about it much if he can help it.

He hears a sound from the path that leads to the settlement, but it's familiar so he doesn't draw his knife or turn around. He knows who it is.

"Can't sleep?"

Vriess has a new chair now, something he's hobbled together from...fuck if Johner knows. Things like metal and--is that _bone_?--and whatever else, it works to get him around so Johner doesn't have to carry Vriess' sorry ass around anymore. Win-win for the both of them.

"Do I look asleep?" Johner asks, hands on his hips. "With the standing? And the talking? And I thought you were supposed to be smart."

"It's just that you have about the same conversational skills asleep as you do when you're awake. So I'm never sure. What are you looking for? Aliens?"

_Yes._ "The planet I was born on," he says gruffly, unsure why that's easier to cop to than the thing about the aliens. He doesn't want Vriess to think he's scared. Because he's not. Unless he sees something moving up there that isn't a shooting star. _Please fucking god, don't let me see that._

"Which one?"

Johner tells him, which means he endures ten minutes of hearing how _isn't that the planet where they sent mentally deficient prison babies_, which is just to be expected. Johner isn't really listening, all he's focusing on is the slightly grating, high-pitched cadence of Vriess' voice. It's kind of fucked up that it's more relaxing than the ocean, but it is and he's too tired to care.

"You can't see it from here, anyway. This is on the wrong side of the galaxy. I think. Maybe? It could be that one over there," Vriess says, pointing up towards a cluster of stars. "Or--look, fuck, I'm a mechanic. I can fix the nav system, I don't need to _be_ one. I don't know where your fucking planet is. Maybe you were hatched."

That makes Johner laugh, a real laugh, and it eases the last of the tension from his dream of water-logged terror. "Guess it doesn't matter. Not like we can do anything about it. Nothing to do but roll with the punches, Vriess.We crash landed on Earth, and we're stuck here unless we can hop a ride with the next ship that puts down here. Which isn't often. I think it was ten years since the last intergalactic anything stopped by. Least that's what I hear them say."

"Where would we go, anyway?" Vriess asks, and it's a simple question--simple, but Johner doesn't have an answer, because he doesn't know. He hasn't really thought about it, because space doesn't sound that appealing anymore, what with all the monsters.

"Roll with the punches, Vriess," Johner says again, and he hits Vriess lightly on the shoulder and then rubs his neck briefly, fingers firm but not hard, just like Vriess did with the kitten back on the _Betty_. Maybe Vriess is his pet, now. It makes Johner smile to think about it that way. "Roll with the fucking punches."

"Okay," Vriess says, and falls quiet.

For a few minutes they both stand there and look up at the dizzying array of stars scattered across the night sky. Dead stars, maybe, whose light just hasn't faded yet. After a little while longer, Vriess leaves, complaining of the cold and heading back towards the small settlement they call home.

Johner doesn't go with him. Instead, he walks further out on the sand and sits on the beach, staring at the horizon. The dream is still an unpleasant echo in his head now that he's alone again, and he knows he's not going to sleep. So he sits and waits for the sun to rise, which feels to him like an eternity. As quickly as nightfall comes, it sure seems to take twice as long for it to go _away_.

The first rays of dawn are weak and pale as they struggle against the dark. Suddenly the sun burns across the sky in vibrant shades of reds, turning the calm sea to bloodied glass.

Soon the sky is filled with light, and whatever waits in the darkness above, Johner can no longer see.


End file.
